Earlier this year, the Oscar-winning film-maker caused controversy after he described Hitler as history's "easy scapegoat" in a presentation for his upcoming US TV series, Oliver Stone's Secret History of America.

In the Times interview, Stone claimed Hitler "was a Frankenstein but there was also a Dr Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support … Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than [to] the Jewish people, 25 or 30 [million killed]."

Asked to explain why this was not well-known, he responded: "The Jewish domination of the media … There's a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has fucked up United States foreign policy for years."

AJC executive director David Harris compared Stone's remarks to those of fellow Hollywood mover Mel Gibson, who was widely criticised for remarks to a police officer who pulled him over for drink-driving in 2006 in which he claimed Jews were "responsible for all the wars in the world".

Yesterday, Stone issued a statement, which read: "In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret.

"Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry," he continued. "The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity – and it was an atrocity."